Why Spurs Would Be the Ideal Next Destination for Swansea's Wilfried Bony

A whole clutch of top Premier League sides appear to be set to miss out on Ivorian striker Wilfried Bony as the striker looks primed to sign a contract extension with Swansea City. However, few things are ever truly certain in football.

As we have seen in the past with players such as Gareth Bale (and perhaps in the future with Hugo Lloris) putting pen to paper on a new deal isn’t always a guarantor of long-term loyalty. Often these contracts are signed in the knowledge that, ultimately, it will just ensure that bidding clubs increase their fees as they attempt to recruit the player they want.

Should Bony agree new terms with the Swans—as the Express suggests he will do imminently—then the extension is unlikely to dissuade his suitors altogether.

Top Four wannabes Arsenal, Liverpool, Everton and Tottenham Hotspur have all been linked with the forward’s signature. At various times, one or other of the clubs have appeared to be leading the chase and closing in on their man.

It’s easy to see why there is such attention in Bony.

The striker was a monstrous performer in Holland, with Vitesse Arnhem, where he scored a devastating 31 in 30 in his last Eredivisie campaign. He left the Netherlands with a record of 46 goals in 65 league games.

Arguably more impressive, is the way his scoring form translated to the Premier League.

Admittedly, he took his time getting warmed up, and he struggled to find his rhythm during the tail end of 2013. However, once 2014 rolled around, his class shone through.

He bagged 16 in 34 league appearances for the Swans last term, including strikes against the likes of Manchester City, Manchester United, Spurs and Cardiff City.

Rarely has a forward arrived in the EPL from foreign lands and made such a big impact in his opening campaign. As noted on Twitter, below, by WhoScored.com’s editor Martin Laurence, Bony scored his first 16 Premier League goals in only 34 matches. It took Luis Suarez 46 games to reach 16 … And he was playing for a superior side.

I was initially surprised that a bigger side didn’t snare him when he left Vitesse, and now that he has starred in the EPL, it won’t be long until he is snapped up by a domestic big boy.

First of all, I will probably discount Everton from the running.

Having spent £27 million on Romelu Lukaku this summer—a younger player with more Premier League goals than Bony—I cannot see the Toffees breaking the bank to buy a player who would likely play second fiddle to the Belgian.

During the summer, the Ivorian’s agent insisted ,via BBC Sport, that his client would only sign for a top-six club: "He should move only to a top-six club or to a big club because Swansea is a very good club," Dalibor Lacina began. 

"We have received interest from a couple of clubs and I have already informed Mr Jenkins [Swansea chairman Huw Jenkins].

"It's too early to talk about concrete names and, from the business point of view, it wouldn't be correct.

"Let's see what will happen in the future but we have no pressure because Bony is happy in Swansea."

This would seem to open the door for any of Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur.

However, do Swansea chairman Huw Jenkins’s comments preclude Spurs from making a bid?

As reported by Wales Online, Jenkins has announced that the Swans will only sell the West African to a “top, top Champions League club.” 

He began: “If a top, top Champions League club come in for him and put the right offer on the table, he knows full well we’ll be telling him about that. So there are no issues with Wilfried Bony.”

Spurs haven’t been a Champions League club since 2010, and haven’t been a “top, top” club since 1962. They can’t be the team for Bony, can they?

Well, if Jenkins’ stance can soften, then I’d argue that White Hart Lane (or wherever the Lilywhites end up) might be the ideal destination for Bony.

It’s hard to see the Ivorian opt for either Liverpool or Arsenal. The Gunners invested in two new forwards over the summer—Danny Welbeck and Alexis Sanchez—and aren’t short of capable forwards. Those two, alongside Olivier Giroud, Lukas Podolski, Joel Campbell, Yaya Sanogo and Theo Walcott, give Arsene Wenger a surfeit of options, and it’s not immediately obvious how Bony would muscle his way into that lot.

Liverpool are less well-stocked, but recent additions such as Rickie Lambert and, to a greater extent, Mario Balotelli, would surely have to be moved on before a high-profile addition was made. Fabio Borini remains at the club, Daniel Sturridge would surely not appreciate the competition for a central striking berth, while players like Divock Origi and, generously speaking, 27-year-old Iago Aspas, might force their way into Brendan Rodgers’ plans.

At Tottenham, however, one suspects that Bony would have a much easier route into an influential role.

Spurs’ striking options are both deficient and unbalanced.

The deficiency comes, perhaps primarily, in the characters and the context. Emmanuel Adebayor has remarkable spells of indifference and Roberto Soldado has struggled to adapt to the Premier League and looks like a fish out of water at times. Harry Kane has promise, but apart from the odd sparkle, he hasn’t demonstrated enough to suggest that he can lead the line as Spurs hunt down those coveted Champions League places.

Then there is the imbalance.

Soldado and Adebayor are 29 and 30 respectively. While some forwards might be approaching their peak at this point, it’s hard to imagine that either of these two will ever be as devastating as they have been in the past.

Kane, on the other hand, is only 21, with only 20 Premier League appearances under his belt. He has shone in the Europa League so far this year, but four goals in 20 EPL showings to date suggests that he still has a lot of development to come before he is truly “the man” at White Hart  Lane.

The club cannot call on a forward in his mid-20s, someone who has experience, motivation and room to grow.

Bony, five years younger than Adebayor, would be an ideal candidate to carry the Spurs strikeforce for the next few seasons.

As a proven performer in the Premier League, he would hopefully help the north London club avoid the kind of unhappy transition that they have encountered with so many of their foreign recruits.

Spurs are a significantly bigger club than Swansea, and while they aren’t necessarily a club that fit Huw Jenkins’ “would-only-sell-to” profile, they would represent a step-up for the striker and an opportunity to progress in his career.

One could also argue that the presence of Mauricio Pochettino would help Bony to thrive.

As we saw at Southampton, and are beginning to see at Tottenham to a lesser extent, the Argentine boss likes his strikers to be involved in the play (making a high number of touches), to win a lot of aerial duels and to play a large number of passes.

This was his template with Rickie Lambert and, latterly, with Emmanuel Adebayor.

Lambert would link up well with the likes of Jay Rodriguez and Adam Lallana and, as outlined by Africa Football Shop’s Jake Meador, Pochettino has begun to install a similar system at Spurs: “Considering that, it is very easy to anticipate a similar system at Spurs under Pochettino with Adebayor in the Lambert role, Christian Eriksen in the Adam Lallana role and Erik Lamela in the Jay Rodriguez role.”

Bony is another player who could play this role effectively. He is relatively tall, but also heavy and strong, he is adept in the air and could give the team a genuine focal point.

He has thrived with a creative midfielder just behind him—currently Gylfi Sigurdsson, formerly (ironically) of Spurs—and is able to involve himself in the build-up play.

As outlined by Meador when comparing Bony and his compatriot Seydou Doumbia, also with Africa Football Shop, the Swansea man averaged 24.3 passes-per-game and managed a pass success percentage of 74.1 last season. He is, as Meador puts it, “comfortable playing a higher number of passes-per-game, which will be useful for helping to bring Gervinho and Kalou into the game.”

Not only would Bony suit the Spurs game under Pochettino, a move to Spurs would also be the right one for him within the context of his career. Finally, as outlined earlier, it would certainly suit the club, who could turn to the Ivorian to compensate for some of the deficiencies in their current offensive options.